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Painting of a light, frozen plain under a pale sky. In the centre a man in a tall hat and green stockings strikes a ball with a club; on the left a boy and a man in a red hood look on, on the right stand two men in black cloaks. In the background skaters, ships and towers.

Exhibitions · Stedelijk Museum Kampen

Stedelijk Museum Kampen reopens with Avercamp and his Colf Players on the Ice

After a renovation, the museum in Kampen's old town hall reopens on 3 October 2026. First on show: a winter landscape the Rijksmuseum and the Mauritshuis have just bought together.

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Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, circa 1665. Mauritshuis, The Hague.

Museum stories

A tronie with a pearl, not a passport

She looks round. The pearl catches the light. A face on canvas need promise no more than that.

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Historical copy of The Night Watch, with guide lines showing the later trimmed format.

Museum stories

The Night Watch is a daytime duty in motion

The name promises night. On the canvas, a captain gives the signal to set off. The light does the rest.

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Leendert Viervant, design for the Oval Room of Teylers Museum.

Museum stories

In the Oval Room, fossil and drawing belong together

Teylers in Haarlem began as a single house of knowledge. Art did not hang beside science there, but within the same idea.

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The mirrored Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

Museum stories

At the Depot, you see how a collection breathes

Behind the mirrored façade in Rotterdam there is no secret attic, but a building that makes storage visible.

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The skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus rex Trix at Naturalis, Leiden.

Museum stories

Trix tells us what bones do and do not hold on to

In Leiden stands a Tyrannosaurus with so much of its bone preserved that you can almost trace the shape of an animal.

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The De Hoop shipwright’s yard at the Zuiderzeemuseum, Enkhuizen.

Museum stories

A museum for a sea that turned fresh

Enkhuizen is home to the life around a stretch of water that was given a different name in 1932. The dyke cut off the salt sea.

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A los hoes (farmhouse without internal partitions) at the Nederlands Openluchtmuseum in Arnhem.

Museum stories

Ordinary houses are history too

In Arnhem stand farmhouses, shops and workers’ homes that were in the way elsewhere. Together they make up a country of everyday life.

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Museum stories

The universe on a living-room ceiling

In Franeker, a model of the solar system that a wool comber built himself turns above a box bed.

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Detail of a steam engine in the Woudagemaal.

Museum stories

Steam you only hear when the pumping station is running

Near Lemmer stands an engine house that is usually idle. When it gets up steam, it is no longer a showpiece.

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Archive photograph of Pakhuis Santos in Rotterdam, before the current museum layout.

Museum stories

A photograph is chemistry that keeps changing

In the Santos warehouse in Rotterdam lies a visual memory of millions of images. Not every print decays in the same way.

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